2. Change Your Blogging Environment

Sometimes simply writing in a different place can release a little creativity in you. If you’re fortunate enough to have a mobile device or laptop – hit a cafe, park, try a different room in your house, go to the beach…. You might be surprised what will come.

3. Answer a Question

The best posts are often those which answer specific questions. Questions tap into people’s needs or problems and can often be greatly appreciated by readers (this adds to reader loyalty).

There are lots of ways of getting relevant questions to answer:

Answer one of your own questions

Ask your readers to submit a question

Ask another blogger for a question

Ask your Twitter followers for questions

Check your comment section to find questions from readers

Visit other blogs and forums to search for questions from their readers

Put yourself in the shoes of a beginner in your topic and imagine what their questions might be

Look at your blog’s search engine referral statistics to see what people are asking to find your blog

Once you’ve got a question – answer it.

Tip: Start a ‘question journal’ of your own that you note any questions that you come across. Add any reader questions to it as they ask them – this way you’ll always have a question on hand to tackle.

4. Start with a Title

Most bloggers start writing their post first and add a headline later – however sometimes doing it the other way around can be fun. You might not end up using the headline that you start with – but it might be enough to spark a little creativity and get the ball rolling on a blog post.

5. Take a Break

One of the best things that I do to come up with ideas for blog posts is simply to go for a walk. Not a walk to think about blogging, just a walk, usually with my son. It is amazing what a little exercise and a little time thinking about something else can do for your creativity and ability to think clearly.

6. Give Yourself a Deadline

I have an unwritten deadline in my mind that I have to publish a post every night at midnight on both of my blogs (the timing varies a little from day to day but I have to at least have one ready to go by that time). I find that having this deadline in mind motivates me to come up with something. While there’s no one there to enforce the deadline it still seems to work for me.

7. Rid Yourself of Distractions

One of the biggest barriers for me in writing posts is getting distracted. Emails, instant messages, phone calls, family noise, online games, researching my next gadget purchase….. I could go on but even as I’m writing this I’m feeling the urge to do something else!

While there’s nothing wrong with any of these things – clearing time to write and putting barriers in place to keep the distractions at bay is important. For me one of the best ways to stop a lot of the distractions that tempt me away from writing is simply to get offline. Other tips include maximizing your screen so all you see is the document at hand, switching off email and instant messaging clients, using a tool like Writeroom (a mac tool that leaves you with nothing to look at on your screen except what you’re writing) etc.

8. Introduce ‘Random Challenges’

This is a little ‘odd’ thing that I sometimes challenge myself with – but on occasion I’ll challenge myself with writing tasks that are a little left of centre. I think I got this from Edward De Bono who in one of his books has a brainstorming exercise that challenges you to think of 10 ways that XXXX is like a XXXX. The exercise is designed to free up your mind and while most of what you’ll come up with is going to be rubbish it sometimes helps you to come up with new ways of looking at problems.

A recent example of this in my own blogging was a post on what the Mona Lisa Can Teach Portrait Photographers. While the Mona Lisa and portrait photography might not be too random – I actually started out to write a post that was about what Leonardo Da Vinci could teach us about blogging! The thought process that I went on led me to a much better topic.

9. Revisit a Previous Post

Once you’ve been blogging for a while it is easy to feel like you’ve said everything you want to say on a given topic. While you don’t want to be saying the same things every day – it’s OK to revisit previous topics.

The key is to find new ways to say those things you’ve said before, keep information up to date and relevant and to show that you’re developing and growing in your understanding of a topic.

What have you written about previously in your archives that is now dated and in need of revisiting?

What have you learned about since you first started your blog that you could write a new post on?

What have new readers to your blog missed out on in your archives?

10. Speak the Post Out Loud

Sometimes I don’t get stuck with the initial idea of what to post – but the next step of refining it into an actual topic that I can write about.

When you’ve got the start of your topic it can be helpful to actually start talking about it – get it out of your head and explain it (even if it’s just to yourself). Sometimes the act of verbalizing ideas can crystalize them in your mind.

11. Free Writing

Similarly to verbalizing it – sometimes just sitting down and writing can release creativity. Many writers use this technique simply as a ‘warm up’ exercise – they sit down with their writing tool (pen and paper, computer etc) and simply write…. they write anything that comes into their mind. It might be total rubbish – but the exercise is not designed necessarily to come up with any ideas (although you might) but simply to get your brain into gear.

12. Switch ‘Voices’

Most of us as bloggers write the majority of our posts in the one ‘voice’ or ‘personality’. Sometimes forcing yourself to write as someone else would write can be helpful. The best fun I ever had writing a blog post was when I wrote 5 Things You Should Know about My Dad the ProBlogger – in the voice of my 1 year old son (I know – most of you thought it was really him…. but it was me!).

The experience of writing about my topic through the eyes of a family member was not only a lot of fun but it also brought a new perspective to a topic I’d covered many times – it also connected with readers in a different way.

13. Switch Styles

In a similar way – sometimes switching the style of writing can be helpful. By style I mean switching from writing ‘list posts’ to writing ‘rants’ or from writing ‘reviews’ to writing ‘case studies’. I’ve put together 20 types of blog posts here that might help you find a new one to experiment with.

14. Repurpose Other Communications

Many of the tasks that we do in the day to day of life can make excellent blog posts if only we’re on the look out to capture and repurpose them.

15. Achieve Something Else

Sometimes it’s not the coming up with an idea that stops you writing – it’s that you need to be doing something else. There’s a pile of dishes in the sink, your dog needs a walk, the lawn needs mowing and an assignment at work or school is over due…

I find that when other jobs are clouding my mind and stopping me from writing well that if I pick one of them and knock it off that the sense of achieving something can roll over into my writing. So put your writing aside for 15 minutes and go and do those dishes and get it off your mind before sitting down to write.

16. Go Surfing

I don’t mean to grab a surf board and actually go surfing (although that would tap into a few of the ideas I’ve already written about and could work) – but go surfing online for ideas. There are a number of places to head:

Other blogs in your niche – what are they writing about? How could you extend what they’ve written? What have they missed? What are their readers asking? DON’T steal their ideas and DO give credit when they stimulate something that you write – but don’t be afraid to bounce off another blogger – that’s what blogging is all about!

Forums – one of the richest places that I find for idea generation is forums. It’s actually one of the reasons that I started a photography forum – because every day there is a treasure trove of ideas created in it.

Social Media – what is popular on Digg, Delicious or StumbleUpon today? What type of articles go viral and how could you apply the principles you see in posts that do to your own topic?

Social Messaging – ask your Twitter and Plurk followers questions, interact with them around their answers – you’ll find that quite often as you interact in these messaging services that ideas will flow.

17. Go Surfing for Ideas Offline

One of my favorite places to go trawling for ideas is a local news stand. Almost every time I go there I come away for ideas for topics after 10-15 minutes of looking through magazines there. Sometimes it’ll be a topic that a magazine writes about that I can adapt for my blog and other times it’s just the titles that I find inspire my writing.

Similarly – libraries or bookshops can also be good sources for inspiration.

18. Play Devil’s Advocate

One of the best ways to come up with a fresh post is to take something that you’ve written about previously where you’ve argued strongly FOR a particular way of thinking – and then write an article taking the opposite view.

You might not completely agree with the post – but can present it in a way that makes this clear. For example – I once wrote a post on why people should consider joining a blog network and then did a followup post looking at why they shouldn’t. While I personally resonated more with the first article the second one actually was well received as it brought balance to the topic.

19. Involve Someone Else

If you’re completely frazzled and incapable of coming up with any ideas for yourself – it might be worth involving someone else.

Ask someone to write a guest post for you.

Invite someone to come on and be interviewed by you.

Swap blogs with another blogger for a day.

Ask another blogger if they have any ideas for posts.

Sometimes an outsider’s perspective can give you the lift you need.

20. Identify Your Golden Hours for Writing

My best time of day for writing is mid morning. I regularly block out this time purely for writing.

For other bloggers that I know the evenings or afternoons are best. The key is to identify the time that you work best and then block out time in that window for writing. Don’t let it be crowded by less important tasks but diarize the time for what is most important – content creation.

Having said that – don’t feel you can’t mix it up. Some days when I just can’t get going in the morning I’ll throw in the towel and go do something else until later in the day.

21. Big Picture vs Small Picture Posts

One problem that I see many bloggers struggling with is being overwhelmed by the hugeness of their niche and the topics within it and feeling the need to cover it all in each post. As a result they write these mega posts with 40 points and then find themselves with not much else to say because they’ve just covered their whole topic in one post.

What I encourage them to do is to think about writing a combination of ‘big picture’ posts and ‘smaller picture posts’.

For example – this very post is what I’d consider to be bigger picture. While it is all on one topic it’s covering a fair bit of ground (20+ points). However over the coming months I could follow up some (or all) of the points in this post with more in depth expansions upon each one.

Alternatively I could have chosen to break this actual post down into 20 or so smaller posts – a series.

22. Ask Your Readers a Question

You don’t need to be the one with all the answers on you blog. Come up with a question to ask your readers that relates to your blog’s topic. You could run it as a poll or simply as a discussion starter.

When you ask readers questions there often will arise possibilities for followup posts including:

answering the question for yourself

compiling reader answers

compiling a list of resources on the topic you’ve asked about

Asking questions also gives readers a sense of involvement and develops community on your blog.

23. Set up News Alerts

If your blog has a ‘news’ focus you’ll definitely want to set up alerts using tools like Google Alerts or Technorati’s watch lists. These alerts will email you or notify you via RSS when a news service or blog posts about the keywords that you identify to be ‘watched’.

Such alerts are also useful for non newsy blogs also as they will let you know how other blogs and news sources cover the topics that you’re writing about. It’s often through these sorts of alerts that ideas for new posts will come.

24. Summarize what Others are Writing

The post was simply a compilation post of posts that other bloggers in my niche had written, plus a few from my archives and a few videos.

While the post is simple (it does take some work to pull together but it’s a different kind of work to writing your own tips) it was very popular with readers and did quite well on social media sites.

What I also found as a bonus is that in compiling the list I ended up with quite a few ideas for future posts of my own!

What Do You Do When You’re Stuck for Ideas to Write About

All of us struggle to find things to write about on our blogs from time to time – I’ve shared a few strategies of what I do – but what about you? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how you break though those dry patches too – share your thoughts in commetns below.

Thanks for the article. This is exactly what I needed. I’m finding it difficult lately to come up with ideas and find inspiration for blog posts; these tips are sure to help me. Number 12 is a good one.

Normally i just write for myself. The hardest part is coming up with blog posts that i think other people will find useful. This wasn’t my main goal when i first started blogging; I just wanted a place to write about design and my own work.

Go back to basics. Answer simple questions. Imagine you are talking to a 5 year old. E.g. Darren, you can explain the history of photography or which companies failed in the conversion to traditional photography to digital photography.

So basically go back to basics and explain history of topic you are writing about.

Go back to basics. Answer simple questions. Imagine you are talking to a 5 year old. E.g. Darren, you can explain the history of photography or which companies failed in the conversion from traditional (film) photography to digital photography.

So basically go back to basics and explain history of topic you are writing about.

Thanks Darren for an exhaustive list of the tips that can be used to write a blog post when running short of ideas. You have covered almost everything. From my experience, if one has chosen a blog on a subject for which he/she is really passionate and have good knowledge, then there will never be shortage of any blogging ideas.

i get my best blogging ideas in the shower! seriously, they just flow out. problem is, i also forget them as quickly. i think i should put a whiteboard marker there, to write on the mirror with. the point is that sometimes the best ideas come when you are doing something completely different, like doing the dishes, as you said.

i have an informal, only-known-to-me list of themes. such as once a week or so i like to do a tutorial, once in a week i do a links post, once a week i try to show my or other’s work, and i try to do a personal post too. no-one knows about this loose time-table, because i like to keep it spontaeous. it helps me to keep my posts varied, and gives me a variety of different themes to post about.

I really enjoyed this post. Thanks Darren! I will definitely be trying out a few of these ideas. Generally I just grab whatever is floating in my mind at the moment and go with it. When all else fails I go with a list of post of links.

Darren – always insightful. I’ve taken one of your suggestions, of asking readers a question, and wrapped it up in a contest to reward users for participating. Calling it Cool Comment Contest where readers who post the coolest comment win $50. Would love to hear what you think of the approach. You can check it out here: http://www.carbonoffsetsdaily.com/win-50

I think what you are suggesting here is a pretty neat idea. Even myself was most of the time stuck on what to write for my blogs. Sometimes, it’s not that I’m lack of subject to write on, it’s just that I’m lost for words. This will help a lot of bloggers including myself.

These are some great ideas! I bookmarked this because I need to see things like this when I get stuck. I really like the idea to come up with a title first, then write the post. I often do this backwards, which makes it harder for me.

The Urbane Lion and I have duelling blogs (he said/she said), so each weekend we brainstorm topics for the upcoming week. Sometimes we go with the idea thrown out, while other times we might say “Hmmm….not quite that, but what about..?” Moral of the story: it really helps to bounce ideas off another person. We happen to be co-creators, but you don’t have to be.

My Mother is a professional writer, and she even have difficulty to write at times. She get a subject and does good reserch on it, writes down bullet points and other info.

Then uses it as referance material for the book that she is writing, sometimes she stays up around the clock and keeps writing pages after pages. Other times when nothing happens she just takes a brake from writing and comes back fresh and new :).

I recently started my blog and burned out three articles for the launch. After all the effort (writing, editing and then the blog setup itself) I found myself drained of ideas for a few days. A balance is certainly necessary. I usually find I have a couple of ideas floating around which I make a mental note of and then start typing once I’ve got a spare few minutes.

Thanks so much for this informative post. These are great ideas. I am fortunate enough to have a laptop and particularly like the idea of going to the beach to write posts! I have bookmarked your blog and I’ll certainly be back.

I just did a post about this subject as well, because a fellow blogger was stuck in a rut of writer’s block: http://kikolani.com/blogging-writers-block.html. My ideas included reading other blogs, doing something to help others (charities, posts to direct traffic to other blogs), and stockpiling posts on creative days to use for dry ones.

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